The rain wouldn't stop. There had been a steady stream of thunderstorms for days. Some storms were just a faint reminder with the lightest of drizzles that barely left a mark on my jacket, while others, like this one, were near explosive in their thunderous omnipresence throughout the entire city.

I can't really say that walking in the rain was my forte, because it wasn't. I'd been a little sensitive to temperature changes since being let out of the iron suit and feeling a combination of cold and wet pressing against my skin as the constant rain soaked through my clothes set my teeth on edge, like I was at the point of freezing, except I knew I really wasn't. There wasn't anything I could do about it though. DG was still missing, and none of my leads had pulled up any positive results. To make matters worse, the constant rain was becoming more of a hindrance as the days went on without end, and navigating the streets was becoming nearly impossible as they became closer and closer to overflowing in rainwater.

I feel like I'd beat the same pavement over and over again, never finding anyone other than myself that even barely met DG's shifted description, but then all the sudden, there she was. She'd just stepped out into the rain from the doorway of a small diner, and she was wholly oblivious to the rain as she walked out of the awning's protective cover while she swiped at her own dripping eyes. She looked just like she had on our first adventure together, in denim dungarees, sky blue t-shirt, worn sneakers, and a bomber jacket, except of course that she'd changed her hair and eyes to match mine. Even with startlingly platinum hair and steel blue eyes like mine, there was no mistaking the princess, and finding her so easily was like stumbling across the path of a rare stag in the wild. Seeing her like that, framed in the light of the doorway and her face upturned as if to catch a drop or two of rain made my heart speed up and my breath catch in my throat, keeping me from calling after her. I tried instead to move into the shadow of the doorway I'd just stepped past, but it was too late. She'd already seen me. Despite the almost hopeful expression on her face, the princess darted away the moment I took a step in her direction.

All I could do was break into a run of my own.

Stepping out onto the flagstones of the avenue separating us, however, I was shocked to find that the street had suddenly turned into a torrent of quick moving rapids, and as I plunged into the icy waters, they dragged me along that road quicker than I had planned. I kept feeling myself being pushed under, and every time my head popped up, I gasped for air, almost afraid I wouldn't get another chance. On one of these brief, harrowing episodes, I realized that the river was taking me close to DG, who had stopped at the edge of the road, waiting for me to draw near. It was a struggle to kick myself closer to the edge, and I was panting and gasping all the while, hoping DG might be able to yank me out in the nick of time.

"DG," I croaked, reaching for her in hopes that she could reach me.

Then the worst possible thing happened; the undertow yanked me back down, and instead of fighting to reach DG, I was fighting to hold my breath. Unlike the other times, where I'd been pushed back up by the current and thrown around like a cork, the dark hands of the water pulled me down further still. Before long, my chest screamed in agony – a kind of crushing pain seared through me that almost made me forget where I was; all I wanted to do was cry out. Then the panic set it. I was going to die in what was almost certainly DG's tears.

When my vision blurred and I thought the end had come, I was suddenly pulled out of the water. The hand that grabbed me must have been stronger than most men, because with just one hand, I was yanked out so fast and deposited on dry land that I didn't even get a chance to lose consciousness. Blinking in the bright sunlight that bathed me like I was newborn, I realized that I was no longer in Central City, but in DG's garden, and I wasn't alone.

DG sat beside me, and her hand rested on my chest, staying the panic that had been there just moments before. Looking into her once more cerulean eyes, I felt my heartrate slow, and the fear subside.

"Dorothy," I breathed out, clearly delirious since I'd never once called her that before. "You saved me."

It didn't seem to bother DG, who was beaming so warmly that it made my chest ache again. I froze when I realized that she was slowly leaning over me, thinking it was too good to be true. Her pale face drawing ever closer to mine, though, and I could feel my heart pounding the closer she got to me. I felt paralyzed – I had wanted this for so long that I almost forgot how to act, but then it all came back in technicolor the moment she'd touched my lips with hers. She was so soft and responsive that I just wanted to wrap her in my arms and keep her with me, but then it was over before I could even reach a finger out to touch her – and she was suddenly sitting up again and smiling serenely once more.

"It's your turn to rescue me, Wyatt." She said simply, causing her beautiful face to fall in the process.

My brain stuttered at her suggestion, and I sat up and scoffed in aggravation. "Dorothy, I've been looking for you everywhere. I don't know how to find you. Could you give me a clue at least?"

DG smiled again and took my hand in hers, squeezing it when she replied enigmatically, "It's as easy as pie, Tin Man."

I was thunderstruck to say the least. When she'd said that, it was like she was speaking with the voices of the Queen, Adele, Adora, and herself all at once, and it made my head feel like it was splitting in two. DG's expression in response to my obvious bewilderment was kind and concerned, and she placed a small hand on my shoulder and shoved it gently. "It's time to wake up, Wyatt. Wake up!"

Thunder rumbled again, and I sat up with a start, not really knowing where I was for a few minutes. As usual, it had felt so real inside that dream that I could swear DG had actually shaken me awake. I couldn't seem to catch my breath no matter how hard I gasped for air, and my skin was dotted with sweat despite being dressed in nothing more than a pair of pajama pants, and the room being as cold as a proverbial ice box. I blinked to try an excise the sleep from them, which was making my vision blurred and disorienting. When I'd finally removed the remnants of my troubled sleep well enough to see, I turned on the light next to the bed so I could see the time.

I grasped the alarm clock in my hand and stared hard at the brass instrument in my hands. It had been dark in my room when I'd startled awake, and rain still softly tapped on my window like it had been doing every morning of the past week. The time shouldn't have been a surprise then, but I groaned all the same. It was more than a little irritating to me that the clock insisted, for the fifth consecutive night, on being two in the morning once again. I was so frustrated that I almost threw the innocent clock across the room and into the fireplace where what was left of the night's fire was smoldering and cracking quietly in the grate; but I didn't, seeing as I didn't want to wake the entire castle with my tantrum. It wasn't my clock's fault that I kept having these dreams every night.

Since DG's image was still burned in my brain and searing my skin as if she'd actually touched me, I knew it would be impossible for me to go back to sleep. I groaned quietly to myself as I rolled out of the bed and reached down for the undershirt I'd apparently stripped off in my sleep. I shivered as I pulled it over my head, and I scanned the room blearily for something to occupy my mind until I could possibly hope to get a little more shut eye. Nothing in that dark, spartan room seemed to grab my attention, and I decided that now was as good a time as any to pick through DG's letter once again. My bare feet slapped the wooden floor as I padded over to the door, where on the other side, my office and that letter sat waiting for me.

Being cold is a distracting thing though, and I wouldn't be able to sit still until I rectified that bite to my bones. Fortunately, my office shared the same fireplace, so the second I entered the room, I was already crouching down in front of the grate. It didn't take long – just a couple of logs and a little air, and the fire sprang back to life again. Relief washed over me, and I continued to squat in front of it a while longer, staring down those amber arms stretching out their little dance while heat seemed to melt the ice that had settled into me. It was so comfortable, sitting in front of that fire, that I almost stayed there a while longer, but I have to admit that DG's words were still haunting me.

It's your turn to rescue me, she'd said, and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out if it had been my own brain manufacturing the message, or if the princess herself was trying to get my attention.

It was a stupid idea really – no matter how strong her light was getting, surly she couldn't enter people's dreams and leave messages like she was sending a letter, could she? I frowned into the fire and tossed a bit of twig into the middle, hoping that somehow watching that small fragment of wood burn would also excise that thought out of my head. When it didn't, I huffed at the fire and frowned, "What are you playing at?" I asked no one in particular, and I straightened once more to cross over to my desk, where the letter sat hidden in a side drawer.

My eyes looked down on that letter without registering any words for a moment. It was like Glitch had taken over my brain and I was the empty-headed one, but I was truly at a loss. I sighed to the ceiling, and I looked up at that dark, oaken ceiling hoping for some kind of help from the universe. The truth is, I'd looked over that letter a dozen times in the last week, and I still couldn't figure out why DG had thought I'd need to read it.

With another huff, I dropped into the chair by the fireplace and stared down that letter again, thinking that maybe if I took it slow, I might catch something I'd missed before:

Dear Az,

I'm reaLly sorry, big sister, that I'm taking off on you again.

This time, though, I'm not going on any adventure that I reallY wanted to take. Before you start blaming yourself, though, I Want you to know that none of this is your fault. Really, if I had to point Fingers, I'd probably blame circumstance and my own unwillingness To conform.

It's a long story, but to shorten it A little, let's just say that mother's suggestion that I start "taking suitors" (yuck) went over like a ton of bricks. I'd rather eat dirt, if I'm being honest, and if that's the only way to keep the counsel happy, then I give up. I'm not really sure why I matter anyway. I mean, as long as my memory is fuzzy, my light won't work reliably, and if That doesn't work, then I'm not much oF a "daughter of light," now am I? It's probably better that I take off anyway – I've never been very good at following the rules, and that's bound to cause probleMs right now, given how touchy everything Is. I just Want you to know that it doesn't matter where I am. I will always love you, and I am so proud of Who you are. I hope that I'll be able to come back soon. For all we know, mY memory will pop up the seconD I'm allowed to just be me.

Just do me a favor. Don't give up being yourself for any of these suitors that mother throws in front of you. You deserve love.

Give Cain this letter if he asks for it. I don't want him to think I don't care when he figures out I've gone. He might not say anything, but he'll need your support, so be nice. I love you sis.

Yours,

DG

Az was right. The letter really was just "sister stuff," as she'd put it, and there was little more than a footnote devoted to me or where she might have gone. There was one thing that kept bothering me though. Until that moment, I'd been going at about a thousand paces a minute, barely even stopping to eat or sleep, and subsequently, I'd read that letter just as fast. This time, though, I'd read that letter slowly, all while bearing in mind my previous observation about the Gale women as a whole. DG was just as adept as her mother and sister at playing games, and I was certain that this letter was no different – and then it hit me. Looking closer at DG's penmanship, it struck me that she was ordinarily so fluid in her writing, and seldom made mistakes. This letter was riddled with errors, though, and I was suddenly aggravated with myself for not seeing it sooner.

I probably could have worked out the riddle over time, but knowing DG, she'd already given me the key. The apple drawn at the bottom of the letter was the clue I needed, I was sure, and I instantly sprang up to cross over to my bedroom, where the now empty bowl of apples still sat on the dresser. Fortunately, the card was still pressed beneath it, and I threw this aside in favor of the tattered tissue within. My heart was racing now, and I was certain that DG had left another message. I flew across the room and sat on the edge of my bed, using the light of the lamp and my beside table to assist me in my investigation. I crouched over the paper, arranging the tissue meticulously so that it sat over the words on the page, and suddenly the minute holes in the tissue made perfect sense. It was a cipher. I held my breath as I put it in place, praying all the while that there was something meaningful hidden there meant just for me. After a moment of adjusting me eyes, I deciphered the brief message:

I love you Wyatt.

Follow the apples to find me.

I will wait for you.

Dorothy

It took me a few minutes to get past DG's first line, "I love you." Every other worry or concern that I'd had before seemed to fall away with those three words, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. If I'm being completely honest, I'd been worrying all week that my feelings for DG wouldn't be shared – that I'd somehow imagined them, and since she'd apparently left me no more than a vague reference to our mornings together for the past few cycles, I might not be anything more important to her than a friend. I had been wholly wrong, though, and what's more the woman had outsmarted me in how she'd left the message, which is not something that many had done in the past. The more I thought on it, the more my chest swelled, and all I wanted to do was find Dorothy so I could kiss her soundly. That hadn't been such an easy task though, so I chewed on her next line, knowing now that every sentence was intentional, and not thrown in on a whim. "Follow the apples," she wrote, leading me to mentally consider the apples I'd been trailing behind throughout the week. Without knowing if she actually remembered Adele, I considered everything leading up to that, and realized that I had never bothered going into her garden, which I really should have done before going anywhere else.

"For a detective I'm not doing so swift," I grumbled to myself as I stood up, deciding that whether or not the suns had risen, I couldn't leave this clue alone any longer. I was a little embarrassed with myself, really, that I was dropping the ball so much, and I was doubly eager to rectify my error as soon as possible.

It probably took me less than ten minutes to throw on clothes and get down the stairs, and in a blink, I was sitting on the bench in the gazebo, staring up at the moon peaking out from behind a cloud. Staring up at that moon, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't seen the sky for a week. Although the rain had slowed down to where it really only rained twice a day, the skies had remained shrouded in stubbornly dark clouds. I wondered how much of that weather was directly linked to DG, and whether she was safe wherever she'd wound up, and if she too was looking up at that moon at this very moment. For a split second, I was able to somehow set my worries aside as I looked up, letting that crisp, clear moonlight wash over me and imagining DG's face. I considered that the moon's light was like DG's serene smile in that dream – beautiful and peaceful, yet benign in its lack of harshness or heat. I almost convinced myself that DG had to be okay wherever she was for the sudden lack of morning thunderstorms, except the niggling worry presented by her command that I rescue her came back just as quickly as it disappeared, and the reason for being in this garden in the first place came back to me full force. I was grateful for that moonlight, because although I'd brought a lantern, it was really only good for throwing light on small areas. The moonlight, however, bathed the entire garden in pale white light, and the occasional shadow from a tree or shrub gave the place a ghostly feel. Without DG here, the place had felt haunted anyway, but I could easily ignore this since the moon's light at least afforded me the ability to see. While my eyes adjusted to that pale light, I sat there quietly, listening to the little night noises – a lazy cricket chirped somewhere off to my left where the shrubs were thick, and the ivy climbed the high stone wall. A dove hooted mournfully in one of the trees ahead of me, surely watching me and wondering what I was doing in its quiet cove so early in the morning. An eager little rabbit bounded across the gravel path leading up to the gazebo, stopping just ahead of me just as it crossed my line of sight, and it watched me momentarily as if sizing me up before it came back down on its front paws and continued along its way. For a moment, I almost forgot that I was in the heart of Central City and imagined that I was in the middle of a woodland forest. Only the distant rumbling of a delivery truck avenues away gave me any real idea of where I was, and once again, I wondered how much of this had to do with DG herself. The woman certainly had a magic of her own, even if her mother didn't see it – she'd brought all this back without even batting an eye, just as she'd brought the rusted organ in my chest thumping back to life. I certainly didn't think it was possible at the time but given how it thudded excitedly any time she was near me, I couldn't deny the effect DG had on everything she touched.

The trouble with these thoughts was, as pleasant as they were, they didn't give me any hint of why DG had sent me into this garden. If I was anyone else, I might have given it up as a complete red herring at this point. Nothing seemed particularly out of place. I kept scanning though, now so doggedly focused on smaller details in hopes of finding something. While I looked, I let my mind wander back onto one of our mornings in the garden, hoping the memory would somehow trigger me where physical clues could not. Fortunately, having spent almost nine annuals in a tin suit with nothing else to look at except the torture of my family on replay, I'd learned how to force myself into other memories to such effect that it was like watching a real-life picture show – DG had called the ones she'd seen on the Otherside movies. This reminded me of a summer morning a few cycles back, where DG had regaled me with stories of going to the movie theater, and I dived in with both hands, hoping it might trigger something important.

"Cain, don't you have movies in the OZ?" She'd asked me one morning.

I looked up from the report I'd been reading and flashed her a skeptical look while asking, "What are you talking about, Princess?"

DG was sitting just outside the flowerbed that circled the gazebo with her pale hands caked in dirt. She'd only paused in pulling weeds to tell me how bored she'd been in the past cycle. She suddenly burst into a ramble about the things she'd do in Kansas when it got too hot to be outside. Before I knew it, she was talking about movies and how she loved to go to them when it was warm out. Seeing as I had no idea what she was talking about, I just let her go on, knowing she'd probably glom onto something else eventually. But then I looked up and noticed that she was fixing me with that wide-eyed, imploring expression that I just couldn't ignore, and I finally put the report down next to me on the bench.

I stood up and walked over to her and got down in the dirt next to her so she would know she had my undivided attention. I glanced at her to smile as I situated myself, gently pushing the pale blue skirt that was laid out around her to the side so I wouldn't sit on it. I could feel my ears getting hot when I noted her own smile, brilliant and pleased as she watched me.

"Okay, DG, tell me about these movies," I finally spoke with a put-upon sigh, letting her hand me a garden shovel of my own so we could both get to work at the same time.

DG willingly obliged, still grinning madly as she plopped a silver spade into my open hand. I briefly took note of the apple carved into the handle, but otherwise shrugged it off and began working the moment I turned it over. I didn't realize it at the time but given what Azkadellia had said about the garden being hers all along, I'll bet those garden tools were hers too. She just didn't know it. In any case, DG and I both resumed working, except now DG explained the particulars about movies – from the technology behind them ("Very similar to a tdsephl," she'd explained) to the people who became famous as a result of acting in them. I admit that I was very intrigued by the idea of westerns and admitted to myself internally that I could probably be convinced to go see one if I ever found myself on the Otherside, but I was more than a little reluctant to say it out loud, being a little afraid that she might try and take me up on it.

Her eyes had sparkled when she next told me about the time that she'd gone on a date with someone named Kevin to one of these movies, and I found myself oddly jealous at the time. "I don't even remember what we saw," she said absently, "but it was a great movie."

I stopped yanking out weeds and stared at her, feeling oddly incensed by her implication. It wasn't that she was a princess – I was keenly aware that she'd had a real life while on the Otherside – but there was something about this scenario that was rubbing me the wrong way all the same. "Do you go to watch the – what did you call them, films – or to moon over guys?"

DG stopped her own work and threw a similarly scandalized look in my direction. "Cain!" She exclaimed, "Are you jealous?"

I could feel my ears getting hot again and suddenly found that I couldn't meet her eyes. She was right. Until she'd mentioned this Kevin person, I had unwittingly imagined us going to one of these movies. In the back of my mind, the concept of sitting shoulder to shoulder with her – where her hand might accidentally slip into mine – made the blood rush a little quicker through my veins. Kevin had obliterated that image, and I'd done a really shoddy job of hiding it when I'd criticized her.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Princess." I grumbled, pretending that there was something really interesting about the weed I was working on.

When I chanced a glance in DG's direction, I couldn't help but notice a whisper of a smile on her face as she returned her attention to the task at hand. The gentle upturn of her mouth and glittering quality of her eyes drew me in like a moth to a flame though – looking back on it, I'm pretty sure that this was the moment I realized I might be falling for her, because despite myself, I just couldn't stop looking at her. I'm sure she felt my eyes on her, and the heat there seemed to cause a reaction in her, because it wasn't long before a pretty blush had climbed up the column of her neck, and her voice wavered breathlessly when she spoke again.

"Well," she finally replied quietly, "I'd rather go with you anyway. It's too bad we don't have them here."

I think my heart stopped, and I forgot what I was doing for a minute. Looking up, I realized that she'd stood up when she said that, and she was standing over me now with that smile of hers brightening her face again. Her hand was outstretched, and the flicker of her eyes onto the tool lying forgotten under my useless hands brought me back to reality. I was desperate to hide my expression, which I was sure was a little thunderstruck given the way my heart was stuttering, so I stared down at that tool and swiped it up instead, plopping it into her open hand without looking at her.

I stood up then, now trying to keep my eyes shielded from her while I busied myself with putting my hat back on. "Yeah, well, it's probably a good thing we don't have movies here. I'd be spending more time lookin' for trouble than enjoying it."

I could hear a faint giggle from the Princess as she turned to return the tools to their hidden alcove under the stairs of the gazebo. I sighed quietly to the sky at this, realizing with a fair amount of mortification that I'd just put my foot in my mouth again. If it had occurred to me that DG didn't seem to mind my missteps, that morning might have worked out differently, with me kissing her there, under her apple tree. As it was though, I couldn't get past the feeling of being rusty and a little out of sorts, and it did a real number on my usual confidence. If DG noticed this, she didn't say anything. Instead, she tossed another apple in my direction and feigned concern for my lack of proper sleeping and eating, making the excuse for me that she was probably the cause of both issues, and it was a sure multiplier of my usual surliness.

It was hard to pull myself out of that moment. It was even harder not to replay it with the additions that I wish I had had the courage to enact at the time. I kept imagining taking her hand instead of handing over the spade and letting her help me stand so I could look her directly in the eye. In my mind, I imagined how soft her hair would be as I ran my fingers through them while my hands traveled to the base of her skull, and how she'd allow her head to rest in my hands as she turned her face upward to mine. It was the sweetest sensation, imagining then how her lips would feel against mine – soft and warm, and she'd emit one of her irresistible little whimpers of ecstasy as we became entangled in each other.

I had to shake myself out of that thought; it wasn't helping me. "Wake up Cain," I grumbled to myself, ending in a heavy, labored sigh and another glance at the sky.

Instead of staying in that tempting fantasy, I returned to the memory and the spade that DG had let me borrow. The apple decal stamped into the handle of that little silver implement had triggered me, and I suddenly wondered about it, and where she usually stored it and the other tools when she wasn't working in the garden. From where I sat, that alcove was only a short trip across the gazebo and down the steps, where a small trapdoor would allow me the thing I was hoping to find. I was moving so fast at that point that I don't think my feet made a sound as I swept across the space, and I was holding my breath the whole time, waiting to see if DG had left anything for me to find behind the door now before me. Sure enough, DG's work bag and its contents sat just inside the door, and I reached for these with a breath of relief. I'd gotten excited too soon, though, for there wasn't anything more interesting than her tools in that canvas bag, and I couldn't help but grunt at it in disgust as I moved to return it to its place, but then I saw it. Laying in the dirt, apparently under the bag I'd just removed, was a battered flyer that was barely readable for all the water it had been exposed to in the past week.

I frowned at it as I pulled it out of the damp ground, wishing all the while that I'd come here sooner, before the elements could destroy my only link to DG's whereabouts. As it was, I couldn't decipher much on that sheet of plain, white paper, except the image of an apple and the words "Apple Betty's" scrolled across the top. There had been more information below those words, but the ink had run together, and there wasn't much more I could get out of it now besides frustration. My hand tightened around that page and my jaw clenched as the aggravation built up inside of me, and I groaned to the sky, pleading internally with Ozma or whatever other deities were listening that I might get some kind of break soon. It was then that I noticed the clouds gathering again to block out the oncoming sunlight, and I decided that prayer was getting me nowhere. Staying in DG's garden didn't seem to be doing me any favors either, so I stood back up with a grunt, deciding to walk instead while the rain continued to hold off.

I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't care at that point seeing that I could feel the anger beginning to bubble to the surface. Every step I took, I considered that I couldn't seem to get past feeling like I was some kind of pawn to the Gales' chess game. I couldn't wrap my head around the purpose for the game at all though, except that the Queen was playing some kind of angle with the counsel, and DG was – in one way or another – complying with it willingly. She didn't seem to want to leave the OZ at least, and as much as I wanted to believe it was because of me, I wasn't entirely sure. She said she'd wait for me – did that mean that she would leave eventually, and if she did, where did I fit in? Did she expect me to just come like some loyal dog? Did she know what I'd be leaving behind if I followed her to the Otherside? Did she care?

The more I let these thoughts run rampant, the angrier I got, and then just as quickly as the thoughts had popped up, they were gone again. I stopped very suddenly when I realized a few things: First, I was no longer on palace grounds, but in the city itself, where everything was slowing coming to life around me. A newspaper truck had rumbled right in front of me, in fact, causing me to shake myself out of my thoughts so I wouldn't get run over. It then occurred to me in quick succession, that the questions in my head were a ridiculous fiction – DG wasn't that kind of woman. She never had been. When she'd first met me, she'd thought me and my family were in danger, and was all set to fight a handful of fully armed Longcoats with nothing more than a stick to defend us. It might have all been an elaborate memory meant to torture me, but she didn't know that until she'd swung a stick through Zero's holographic chest. I had never said anything, but even if I'd never known she was a princess, I probably would have followed her to the very edge of the Deadly Desert after that first day, and it was only partially because I felt like I owed her. The rest was something else altogether, and I'd only just begun to come to grips with what it was before she'd taken off on me. If I'm being honest, I was probably a bit miffed about it, which led me to my second-to-last conclusion: I was acting like a pig-headed kid about the whole thing, when I should have been considering DG's feelings. Clearly, she hadn't left because of me: She'd gone to pretty elaborate lengths to make sure I could find her without the interference of anyone else judging by the breadcrumbs that she'd left, and she was putting a lot of faith in me by revealing her feelings the way she had without knowing for sure if I felt the same. For all she knew, I would drag her back to the palace the minute I found her; forcing her into an arrangement crafted by the counsel rather than what was in her own mind. She was, in usual DG fashion, leading with her heart in the face of insurmountable odds and I couldn't help but love her for it.

The last conclusion I reached, as I stood there on a street corner at the edge of Central City, was that I had somehow found myself in the exact place I needed to be. The suns peeped out between two clouds and spread dazzling light on the building just ahead: I was nearly blinded by the sudden flash of light on the building bedecked in chrome light fixtures and doors. When the suns had disappeared behind the cloud once more, I noted that the sea green sign crowning the joint had a shiny red apple in its center lined in red neon, and below it, the words "Apple Betty's" were gleaming in equally bright neon of crisp, brilliant white. The sprinkling of patrons at various locations within the place told me that the place was most likely a twenty-four-hour establishment, for most of the diners were at varying stages of their orders. It was the kind of place I might have frequented as a Tin Man, except it hadn't existed at the time. It was also the kind of place I might expect to find a slipper who'd been a waitress, who was also in hiding, being that it was clear on the other side of town from the palace and gave said fugitive the opportunity to make quick cash. No one would think to look for DG here, because they'd all been near-amnesiatic about her penchant for trouble and took it for granted that she remembered very little about the OZ herself.

I stood there a minute longer, considering my next move. I scanned the wall of windows across the wide avenue and the people within, looking for some sign of DG, and wondering if I should show my hand or not. If DG had decided to take up her Otherside profession once more, she'd know right away that I was there. Then again, she'd probably know it if I just chose to camp myself outside, given that there wasn't any real way to conceal my presence on the stark street corner I was still standing stock still on like a human lamppost. It was with that realization that I felt a somewhat irritated frown creeping up on my face, and I tugged the hat down on my head as I stepped down from the curb to cross the street. With a sigh, I prepared myself for whatever game DG had in mind, knowing that whatever she had in mind, I was on her playing field. If I wanted any chance for the outcome I'd had in mind all along, I would have to play by her rules alone, and leave behind the agendas of Queens and politicians. Given that I cared very little for either the other players or their agendas, that was easy to do. I just wasn't sure how easy the rest of it would be, even if she had admitted to loving me already. I still hadn't figured out what game it was we were really playing, or if I had any chance of winning it, or her, at all.